WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” was released Yesterday

In summary the major fetures of this WordPress 2.9 release are as follows and the list below is in the same order as the video presentation above:

A Built-In Image Editor (at last!)

This is really supr cool and finally we all get what we have been missing for years (why did it take so long?) This new image editor will let you to edit (obviously), crop, flip, rotate and even scale your images so you can now basically do what you want with them! And apparently more and better media handling features are on the way…

Batch Plugin Updates (with Compatibility Checker)

This now means you can easily update 10 plugins all at the same time instead of clicking on each one by one In addition it comess with a new compatibility checker which checks the plugin data to let you know if your plugins are actually compatible with the release of WordPress.

Video Embedding by URL (at last again!)

Video embeds just got a ton easier and less error prone! You can now just paste a video URL on a seperate line in a post or page and it will automatcially pull in the correct embed code for you. This comes with support for all the major video sites with more to be added later.

Trash Can Feature

No real trach can icon to speak of but at leaset now you recover from accidental deletions you might make for bot posts and comments and they have also got rid of those annoying little “are you really really sure” messages that cam with deletions previously.

Conclusion

Overall this is a great feature relase from WordPress with 2.9 and it brings the software to somewhere where many felt it should have been along time ago – but at least it’s there now and with still more to come you blogging experience is set to become so much easier, fun and dare I say it, pleasurable (mmm – doesn’t sound right!).

Anyway this is a great step forward in the right direction and WordPress 3.0 in 2010 next year is going to be so good, even with a new default theme for us to play with and hopefull that will be something we can use instead of just deleting everytime we install the software.